• Blog

    Butternut, chestnut and tahini Soup

    12 March 2024 - By 

    This is a little plain without the seed, chestnut, rosemary, tahini and olive oil topping. With them it’s pretty killer, which seems ridiculous to state as adding that much nice stuff is going to make anything interesting. But yeah… The base soup is just roast butternut and chicken stock. Using high quality chicken stock would help, as ever, but I’m not sure this one will ever set the world alight. Using a nice seasonal pumpkin would also improve things, butternut squash is the poor cousin. From Green Feast Autumn, Pg. 188

  • Blog

    Gary fooks seabass

    12 March 2024 - By 

    This isn’t really the recipe, which calls for whole seabass, but steaming this fish, brushing oyster sauce over it, then pouring boiling oil over it sure is tasty. From River Cottage

  • Blog

    Roast root veg and lentils

    12 March 2024 - By 

    Very nice, incredibly healthy meal. In fact the original recipe adds pasta… And I almost never object to the adoption of pasta to anything… But with hearty root vegetables and plenty of lentils to fill in the nooks and crannies, I just can’t see that it would add much, so I dropped them. Used cayenne pepper for hot paprika, and Hungarian Paprika, the truest paprika, for the sweet. Very fine. From Nigel Slater – Green Feast Autumn, Pg. 206

  • Blog

    Lion’s Head Noodles

    10 March 2024 - By 

    There’s a more complex Fuchsia Dunlop recipe for these as well that is worth trying, but this was excellent. I also used pork shoulder minced in the processor to get a higher fat content, which was great and no extra time really as all the meatball ingredients needed processing together anyway. Deeply satisfying, brothy, noodly meal. Although I’d go heavy on the stock as over multiple days the noodles absorb a good deal of it in reheats. From Noodles by Terry Durack, Pg. 66

  • Blog

    Dan Dan Noodles

    9 March 2024 - By 

    Better than my previous attempt of these, and because I was lazy and added no words back then I have no idea why. I remember that it felt curiously straightforward and quick in a way that that simply wasn’t the case this time, so perhaps I skipped ingredients and steps and merrily presented an acceptable approximation. Not this time, ever ingredient accounted for here and my first instinct is to say that there chilli oil needs to be halved… Or at least the one I used does. Not only was it fiery hot, but it introduced enough salt to preserve…

  • Blog

    Hong Kong Crispy Noodles

    9 March 2024 - By 

    This reminds me of Pancit Canton, but with a pleasingly crispy thin noodle bed rather than thick juicy noods, and possibly a less crowd pleasing flavour… May be a harsh judgement, I did enjoy this rather a lot. Served in the middle of the table as a big steaming f centerpiece or us to dive into without due consideration for appropriate portion size. Real good.

  • Blog

    Light Fruit Cake

    9 March 2024 - By 

    This is Nigel Slater’s gooseberry crumble cake (minus the gooseberry and the crumble) and 260g of soaked dried fruit. And it’s great. I skewed the ratio of flour to almond another 30g towards almonds. And I chopped up the glace cherries before soaking them in rum with sultanas and raisins, and I wouldn’t skip the cherries, the flavour they add is excellent. This cake always takes longer than the suggested 1 hour for me. This had around 1hr 15mins and this was too much, the outside being a little singed. Would love to add some cinnamon, try different alcohols.

  • Blog

    Corn Chowder

    23 February 2024 - By 

    Tried to omit the cream initially… But this may depend on the creaminess to add body as I wasn’t impressed until I added some single cream, which tied it together. Perhaps using a really good chicken stock rather than the stock cube I used here might mean you can go without the cream… Worth trying. it’s also possible that yoghurt could be used. I think the green chilli is also important to punch through the starchy, sweetness. In fact I also added the juice of a lemon after cooking which I think helped it along. From Milk Street Fast and…

  • Showdown

    Croissants: flour showdown

    15 February 2024 - By 

    On test: Plain flour, protein 11.3% Bread flour, protein 12% 00 flour, protein 12.5% Plain flour is surprisingly excellent for croissants, takes a good bit of kneading, and this isn’t exactly a fair test with the others as I used a different folding technique (1 x book fold, 2 x letter fold was used with the plain flour croissants) and I didn’t control the proof well, so it took several hours to reach triple the size. But these are just lovely and short… Not exactly authentic, a bit shorter than a typical croissant but quite delicious. The following were made…